Jackie's obsession with Law and Order: SVU, Sabrina Rubin Erdely's search for missing scars, and more.

It was blind faith in her single source—a faith bordering on zealotry—that doomed Rolling Stone contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely to write a false story about gang rape at the University of Virginia.

New documents submitted in court Friday as part of UVA Dean Nicole Eramo's lawsuit against the magazine make clear that Erdely was given plenty of reason to distrust Jackie. Instead, Erdely rationalized Jackie's repeated failure to produce corroborating witnesses by surmising that these were the actions of a true victim and survivor of sexual assault.

The documents released Friday contain hundreds of pages of Erdely's notes, and transcriptions of her interviews with more than a dozen key players, including Jackie, friend Alex Pinkleton, and UVA anti-rape activist (and White House advisor) Emily Renda. Here are five of the most interesting things they reveal about the debacle.

1) Jackie Really Did Seem Traumatized

To be absolutely clear, Jackie's retelling of her subsequent trauma was convincing (even if the story itself was hard to believe). Jackie painted a compelling portrait of a student who had suffered harrowing, ongoing emotional abuse. She described being unable to get out of bed for weeks, failing classes, suffering panic attacks whenever she encountered members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, having suicidal thoughts, and eventually seeking support and counselling.

Anecdotal evidence suggested that this trauma was genuine. After interviewing Jackie, her then boyfriend, and Pinkleton, Erdely accompanied them to the Phi Kappa Psi house to inspect the scene of the crime. As they drew near the house, Jackie suffered a breakdown, burst into tears, and ran away. Erdely witnessed this episode herself, and took it as one of many indications of Jackie's credibility.

Jackie wasn't always consistent, but the inconsistencies didn't seem compelling enough to dent Erdely's faith. In fact, these inconsistencies largely confirmed to Erdely that Jackie was telling the truth, since Erdely believed that such behavior was typical of survivors of sexual assault. It's no mystery why Erdely had come to hold this view: she consistently relied on the testimony of biased sexual assault experts, including Wendy Murphy and David Lisak.

2) Failing to Interview Jackie's Mom and Friends Was the Mistake

Erdely made a significant misstep when it came to second-hand sourcing, and it's one that is well-documented in her notes. Indeed, if this error had been addressed properly before publication, the entire story would likely have unraveled. Instead of seeking comment from the most relevant witnesses—Jackie's mother, her friend Ryan Duffin, and alleged perpetrator Haven Monahan—Erdely accepted Jackie's contention that her mother and Ryan wouldn't consent to be interviewed. And she didn't obtain the name "Haven Monahan" until the story had already gone to print.

Erdely interviewed many friends of Jackie's who could testify to her emotional state in the weeks following the attack. But Duffin—along with two other friends, Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock—encountered Jackie immediately after the rape, and could have given key evidence about her physical state. Her mother could have confirmed the existence of Jackie's bloodied dress. To her credit, Erdely repeatedly asked to speak with these people, but Jackie stonewalled her. She also refused to give Erdely the last names of Duffin, Hendley, and Stock, which prevented the reporter from interviewing them herself.

Erdely also insisted that Jackie provide the name of her attacker so that she could reach him for comment. Jackie adamantly refused, and after consulting with her editors, Erdely decided that comment wasn't necessary. But here's the thing—even if she wasn't going to contact him, Erdely should still have pressed Jackie for the name, if only to confirm his existence. A Google search would have revealed that no such person existed: indeed, this is exactly what happened, once Jackie gave up the name after publication of the article.

3) Jackie's Obsession with Law and Order: SVU Played a Role

Did Jackie base her story on an episode of Law and Order: SVU? It seems plausible.

According to the documents, Jackie told Erdely she was obsessed with the show—she recalled, off the top of her head, that main character Elliot Stabler departed the show after its 12th season.

Jackie told Erdely that her assault called to mind a specific episode in which a female college student is gang raped by fraternity members. No one believes the girl, and she eventually commits suicide.

Jackie also said that some time after her assault, she re-watched the episode with her father. This prompted her to tell him, for the first time, that what happened to the girl on the show had also happened to her.

4) Jackie's Scars Were a Tricky Issue

Jackie described being knocked into a table and pressed against broken glass as part of her ordeal. But it's not clear whether there was any evidence of scarring on her body, even though Erdely looked for marks.

The reporter wrote in her notes that she couldn't see any scars on Jackie's arms, and Jackie's boyfriend said that he had never noticed any on her back. Jackie said that her mother believed they had faded over time.

One former friend of Jackie's told Erdely that she had noticed scratches, but attributed those to Jackie's cat, and possibly, to self-harm.

5) 'Our Worst Nightmare': Erdely's Dramatic Realization that Jackie Was Lying Happened All at Once

Journalist Richard Bradley was the first to express skepticism of Erdely's reporting. He did so on November 24. I followed with my own article on December 1, which quoted Bradley.

For several days, our misgivings didn't phase Erdely, even though many other news outlets had repeated them. Erdely stood by her story until the night of December 4. Up until that point, she was planning to publish a follow-up article expressing complete confidence in Jackie.

What changed? Very late that evening, Erdely had a conversation with Jackie in which she asked for assistance in identifying Haven Monahan. Jackie was evasive, and eventually hung up the phone. Erdely then called Pinkleton, who had been trying to track down Haven Monahan herself. They agreed that the story no longer added up. "Hardly anything she said to me or said to you over the past year is working out at all," said Pinkleton.

Erdely then sent an email to her editors with the subject line, "Our Worst Nightmare." In the email, she wrote, "We have to issue a retraction."

In a statement to the court, Erdely apologized for her missteps.

"I cannot stress enough that at the time the Article was published, and until the early morning of December 5, I firmly believed that everything in it was true. It was never my intention to cause harm, and I feel nothing but sorrow and regret over the entire experience. If I had had any doubts prior to publication about the integrity of this story, or about Jackie's credibility as a source, I would not have published it."

(Thanks to KC Johnson for providing the documents. Read his comments here.)

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If I had had any doubts prior to publication about the integrity of this story, or about Jackie’s credibility as a source was anything other than an agenda driven true believing hack, I would not have published it.”

Rolling Stone was very fortunate that they had not printed alleged details that led anyone to single out a student as a rapist, as their fact-free reporting instead diffused the blame over an entire fraternity. Their real target was the universities that they believed – largely incorrectly there, too – were systemically failing assault victims.

The publication continued to assert there were other adjudicated incidents that could have just as easily but not as sensationally proved their point. I’m wary of this, and so will be I imagine a large portion of news consumers. Rolling Stone has done irreparable damage to their cause and, instead, spotlighted the need for the presumption of innocence.

“The publication continued to assert there were other adjudicated incidents that could have just as easily but not as sensationally proved their point.”

Which point is that though, exactly? If the point is that college students get up to a lot of unfortunate drunken sex, some of which amounts to indisputable (and woefully under-reported) rape, and a lot more of which falls into a very hard to adjudicate gray area, point taken. I didn’t need Rolling Stone to inform me of that fact, but I’m sure they could have written an informative article on the subject.

If the point is that some (or even one) of our best schools have fraternities (or even one fraternity) where participating in a gang-rape is a required part of the fraternity initiation process… that would be news, if it were true.

I’m also inclined to think that, while no non-fictitious person was directly indicated in the RS piece, it certainly implied that all members of Phi Kappa Psi at UVA had participated in a brutal gang-rape as part of their initiation. We make it very hard to sue for libel in this country, for good reason, so I’m not necessarily advocating for damages for all or any members of Phi Kappa Psi.

That said, can you imagine what it must have been like to be a member of Phi Kappa Psi right after the article was published? How do you explain that story to your girlfriend, your Mom, your future employer, all of whom trust journalists to tell something approximating the truth. “No, really I didn’t gang-rape anyone to get in. And I’ve stopped beating my wife.”

it certainly implied that all members of Phi Kappa Psi at UVA had participated in a brutal gang-rape as part of their initiation.

It wasn’t implied. It was stated as a fact. A well-known fact.

It was also reported as fact that 7 (or as many as 9) members of the fraternity brutally and forcibly gang-raped a coed with no fear of reprisal. During a party at which many others, members and non-members were present. This indicates that “rape culture” is so deeply ingrained at UVA that nobody is even going to notice another brutal gang rape, let alone fear that there might be any consequences from such an act.

Did anyone believe that any particular member of the fraternity was a rapist as a result of the story? Well, the university certainly did. And if you head over to Jezebel, you’ll see that even with everything we know today, a large number of people believe that “something happened to her” and the fraternity is guilty.

Was that the point of the reporting? I imagine that in a country as large as ours Erdely could have found an _actual_ case of rape that had at least been neglected by some University administration. That she wound up going with an obvious fabrication instead makes me think that the point was something else.

“I cannot stress enough that at the time the Article was published, and until the early morning of December 5, I firmly believed that everything in it was true. It was never my intention to cause harm, and I feel nothing but sorrow and regret over the entire experience. If I had had any doubts prior to publication about the integrity of this story, or about Jackie’s credibility as a source, I would not have published it.”

Nice.

You’re an unprofessional idiot – as are your bosses and RSM. Your actions could have ruined the lives of innocent people.

IOW, you’re pretending this was a singular example of excess gullibility on your part; but it actually appears to be the very-predictable consequence of someone who seems more interested in pumping an “activist narrative” than doing actual reporting & journalism.

How this person has a job in journalism is beyond me. She’s incapable or unwilling to grasp the seriousness of her actions. If this is how she rolls, then get into activism or write shill pieces for activist organizations.

No good or competent people in this story. Bunch of irresponsible clowns trying to push a narrative to ‘sell’.

Erdely then sent an email to her editors with the subject line, “Our Worst Nightmare.” In the email, she wrote, “We have to issue a retraction.”

If this was her conclusion so early on in the process… i think its odd that Rolling Stone never retracted the story until months later. (april, to be exact – and then only after the post-mortem by the Columbia J-school*)

The author of the piece seemed to completely abandon any belief in her own story – yet the RS people seemed to want to drag that whole debate about the ‘truthiness’ of the thing for months on end. How many articles saying “I BELIEVE JACKIE” were there in that period?

Was the idea that “even if the facts were wrong, we can’t let the *narrative* die so quickly?”

basically, i’m not much interested in how shitty RS & Erdely’s reporting was; i think all of that is known.

what’s more interesting to me is how they handled the political-aftermath, and their continued mendaciousness after being *caught*

Its the same distinction as the “benghazi” kerfuffle. What happened(or not), happened – fine. But there were crimes/lies in how things were spun after the fact which are being given a pass.

“I cannot stress enough that at the time the Article was published, and until the early morning of December 5, I firmly believed that everything in it was true. It was never my intention to cause harm, and I feel nothing but sorrow and regret over the entire experience. If I had had any doubts prior to publication about the integrity of this story, or about Jackie’s credibility as a source, I would not have published it.”

Bull you were only sorry cause you got caught, You had your story and were going with it. You inteneded to destroy the system that you think is the ill of all America. You had your Social Justice Mandate and rolled with it. The fact that no one at Rolling Stone was fired means no one there cares other then they got caught lying. If you didn’t see tyhe errors was cause you didn’t want to.

This prompted me to go back and scroll through the Jezzie comments again. Wow. just spectacular. They never back down from full-on team Tard. Even as the story unraveled, they lockstep maintain that the only possible motivation to question it is evil misogyny – and stupid, evil misogyny at that – because it is so obvious that nobody would ever make up such a thing.

I find it informative for “people” writ large. People just aren’t capable of much in the way of introspection. In almost every case, the best you can hope for when someone’s closely held beliefs are challenged is “yeah, but still….”

The sad thing is, the details are irrelevant. They grab our attention and they tap into our emotions. But as has been said, most rape allegations aren’t fabricated. Something happened to “Jackie” and hundreds of other “Jackies” around the country. Does it really matter if the guy worked at the UVA pool or was at a certain frat party on a certain date? Are rape victims expected to remember every gory detail of an attack that happened amidst a swirl of drugs and alcohol and noise and strangers and parties? That’s asking a bit much of anyone.

Another

What if she forgot what frat party she was at? Wouldn’t that explain the most problematic discrepancies and be a pretty fucking easy thing to do if you’re in an unfamiliar environment (ie a fourth week freshman) and traumatized?

So the obvious conclusion is that everyone else is wrong.

It’s horrifying, but, if you are assaulted, attacked, or generally in a traumatizing situation, write down all the details as soon as possible. Write it alllllll down. The sooner the better. Because traumatic memories do get fragmented, and right now the public sees that proof that it didn’t happen, instead of proof that it did.

and

I also find it helpful to immediately find the nearest white male and allow him to confirm or deny that I was raped.

Funny? Yes. But realistically as a business matter turning a proggie rag into a libertarian publication would work about as well as turning the heart attack grill into a salad place. Proggies want their gruel and will just get it somewhere else.

Not really because I don’t have a basis for comparison. That said I am really really sure that as stupid as proggies generally are they can still distinguish libertarian arguments from their usual brand of derp.

. . . had Erdely been clearer in her disclosures about what she’d done to reach Jackie’s alleged attackers and what her agreement with the girl had been.

Ah yes, the old ‘its not really my fault, I was working on assumptions based on poor information’ defense.

Personally I think Erdely was pretty clear about what she’d done to reach Jackie’s alleged attackers – jack shit. If she had talked to anyone who offered corroboration she would have said so. If a reporter doesn’t say they did something and ignores requests to clarify whether they did that thing or not, you can safely assume they didn’t do that thing.

I have no idea what Gilmore is getting at with his “WHAT ER U TRYIN TO HIDE?!” comment, or the statement that “when it HAS been addressed, and some argument given in response…. either critique the reasons why, or move on.”

I am well aware of the story, and WaPo’s tepid justifications for continuing to withhold Jackie Coakley’s name (as Gilmore linked to).

So let me be clear — I was not asking why Robby or WaPo were declining to use Jackie’s full name. While I’m certain that they have vastly different reasons for doing so, that’s their call.

I am, however, wondering why the press as a whole, with as much unanimity as you will find these days, has apparently decided to forego the use of her full name. All this does is maintain the illusion that Jackie is still somehow a victim without agency, but instead of her victimizer being a UVa fratboy, it’s now Sabrina Erdley.

So why do I care? Mainly because I think people ought to know who Jackie Coakley is, and remember the real harm that her actions have likely caused, and will continue to cause, to those women and men who are actual victims of sexual violence. Sabrina Erdley may have fanned Jackie’s falsehoods into an international conflagration, but it was Jackie who started the fire in the first instance. As a society, we should seek to identify the disreputable liars among us — not to shame them, but to allow the rest of us to avoid them as we see fit.

Honestly, as I said below, I just think she’s a nut. Jackie Coakely, OK? Disreputable liars describes almost everyone, at some point in their life, but Coakely’s personal lie is unimportant when compared to Erdely’s published lie.

I haven’t named her so far in my rather outraged comments, because it didn’t occur to me to mention her. I think she’s a minor player, and it simply didn’t come up. She’s not the focus of my outrage. There will always be some spurned woman, just as there will always be some stalker ex-boyfriend, just as there will always be some nutjob who kills a lot of people (the last, I’ll admit, is a stretch, and might be better discussed separately.)

My problem is not with Jackie, really. It is with Sabrina Erdely, who turned Jackie’s hysteria into national news, and a national agenda. Should Jackie face some consequences for lying about rape? I’m torn- you shouldn’t do that, but she’s so manifestly nuts (can you imagine causing this kind of furor over a romantic rejection? Do you think she will ever escape having done so?) that I don’t care enough about Jackie to remember her name.

I care about the people reporting on Jackie. I care about what it says about them that they reported on her as they did. I care about the questions that raises about journalism, and truth.

I’m guessing that she hasn’t done her career prospects any good… imagining looking over resumes… “oh, Jackie. Yep, let’s interview her. I’m sure that will lead to less sex trouble in an office full of millenials and me.”

Feminists are so blinded by their own lies that they will walk into traffic thinking that “teach cars not to crash” is a sound defense. The reason it is so hard to find an actual rape victim on campus, out of the literally millions of “1 in 4” college girls, is that the 1 in 4 stat is a complete fabrication by feminists who hate men and craft lies like Jackie Coakley did to demonize men. THAT is rape culture. .

It’s shaping up like the beginning of an apocalyptic movie: Thousands of people from all over the world go to Rio for the Olympics, get the Zika virus, spread it back home, and civilization collapses under the weight of millions of pinheaded babies….

Because we don’t all start from zero, and because I’d seen so many people doing so well, so easily, when I was given only the ghost of a chance. Yeah, actually, if I were born poor and black in Baltimore I’d be so pissed that I’d be marching on the suburbs with torches. Well- I wouldn’t, because I’d know what would happen if I did, and I imagine the National Guard might get involved.

Akira’s right that the billions, maybe trillions we’ve spent have been mainly spent making pious white people feel better about themselves (and paying them well in many cases- a strange form of penance.) I live in an area where every church has a blacklivesmatter banner covering its front, and where every congregant is dedicated to development policies that ensure that only a very few African-Americans live near them- a college degree is a must, of course. It’s good to have a black friend or two, especially if they are pursuing graduate studies. You can use that to bludgeon other white people for their privilege, among other things.

On the other hand, I have, for a variety of reasons I won’t get into or admit to here, spent a lot of time with some very poor African-Americans, especially in the South. We spent a lot of time talking (for reasons I won’t admit to) about life, about our prospects, etc. And while I think the whole “white privilege” thing is nonsense…

What is not nonsense is that my friend Eric, a really great and brilliant guy who, when I met him, had just been released after 27 years in prison over an armed robbery he committed when he was 17, did not deserve those 27 years.

I might spend more time around very poor African Americans, if some of them didn’t shout at me, attack me, and threaten me almost every time I find myself walking or biking through their neighborhoods (I don’t own a car) on the way to work.

In general, I’m getting progressively less sympathetic to the ‘plight of the poor black community’ the longer I live so close to it. It’s especially grating to hear all about how it’s all my fault (I’m white, and live on a college campus what’s more), as if, if I had never existed, all the poor decision making that’s mostly to blame would somehow not be as bad.

Well, returning so late that you’ll likely never see my response, but…

What I’m on about is that our history around this is a horrific one, and it’s not something that can be ignored. There are a lot of people who have good reason to be angry. A lot of the politics around it are obviously cynical, and some of them are pretty disgusting. And it’s easy enough to just turn your nose up at the whole thing because of that. But that won’t make it go away, and I think you have to distinguish between the politics and the real injustice.

I’ll also admit that I have very little idea what ought to be done, or what a not-cynical politics around it might look like. Libertarians have some answers (end the drug war, occupational licensing, have education vouchers. more police accountability, etc.) but they don’t seem sufficient to me.

I guess the thing is that- well, I have little patience for intersectionality, white privilege cant (which looks to me mainly like a way for certain privileged whites to bludgeon less privileged whites,) etc. And I know they’re certainly going to elicit reactions like yours- none of us like being shouted at, or blamed for things we had no hand in. It offends our sense of justice, and I have similar instincts in this regard.

But you shouldn’t, IMHO, let those instincts blind you to the fact that a poor young black man in Baltimore might also have a sense of justice, that it might be mightily offended, and that it might be justly so. Is setting things on fire a reasonable response? Maybe not. But tell me- what reasonable response would satisfy his sense of justice?

I don’t have answers. I just don’t think you should be so quick to dismiss the questions. They are real, and they are not going to go away.

That’s the new expression du-jour for “lying to federal agents”. Its intended to suggest that the “trust”-problem is more to do with optics and relationships than actual criminal behavior

the comments are mostly of the kind suggesting, “WHY DO YOU EVEN FOCUS ON THIS WAPO? THESE ARE RIGHT-WING SMEARS”

e.g.

Miss Muffit 5:01 PM EST I’ve followed her for years and don’t have issues with her trustworthiness. She has been harassed and accused of being sketchy so much with nothing ever proven. Her enemies have simply ruined her reputation based on innuendo. True, the email situation hasn’t helped, but I think she is far more competent, knowledgable., mentally stable and able to work with others than her competition. People just have a gut reaction to her and she’ll never be able to fix that. People who think with their brain and not only their gut understand how many good qualities she has.

I think the main rule, not just of the SJWs, but of everyone who wants to control things, is to get to the point where you can tell obvious lies, and make people afraid to point out that you are lying. You can start with small obvious things, in a good cause, and make people seem mean if they object. Then you move on to bigger lies… once people have gotten in the habit of accepting dishonesty from you in a good cause you can get away with larger more obvious lies, in any cause at all.

I remember first reading second-hand reports and thinking, wow, that sounds pretty bad. This University worked hard to cover up a savage crime.

Then I heard the first hints of doubt, so I read the article and… there was no question in my mind that the entire thing was fabricated. I mean, at that point I thought maybe _something_ had happened to this young woman, but I knew, for sure, that whatever happened bore no resemblance to what was reported.

I partied pretty hard as a young man. I dropped out of high school at 14, started partying with University students then, and finally went to University from the age of 24 to 28. I’ve known a lot of frat boys, and seen a lot of weird drunk sex. I have some scars on my forehead from having bottles broken over it after keeping some dubious townies from pulling a very cute and very drunk girl out of a party to who knows where. I have some regrets over not having taken better care of some friends of mine at times. And I know how dubious sex tends to happen, on and off campus.

There was never (having read it) any question in my mind that that the RS article was a lie from start to finish… it didn’t just strain credulity, it treated credulity like a fine consomme. What became clear, in the end, was that some conclusions are more equal than others. Some are to be come to easily, but challenged only with great difficulty, and at some personal risk.

Something is wrong when it takes bravery for a journalist to gingerly point out inconsistencies in an obviously untrue account, especially when it is an account meant to influence important policy.

But this folderol makes me think of Britain, where all the patriotic songs are loaded with religion too but I haven’t heard any complaining about it. Maybe it’s just me living here and noticing it but man I’m tired of everything being politicized.

not really. People enjoy pointless rituals. when everyone sings a song together, its not about whether the song includes “God and Country” so much as the act of “singing together” that matters to people. complaining that the content is not to your personal liking will elicit a shrug from most people and the suggestion that “maybe you shouldn’t participate then”

I’m just saying, it reminds me of the bullshit kerfuffle around the guy who wanted to insist that “In God We Trust” needs to be removed from the nation’s currency.

I can see finding ‘god bless america’ tedious if you find yourself hearing it more than once a year, but complaining about it as though its supposed to be “everyone’s problem” is not a battle that’s going to yield anything productive.

complaining that the content is not to your personal liking will elicit a shrug from most people and the suggestion that “maybe you shouldn’t participate then”

Try that at (name your sporting event here) during the anthem, you’re gonna get a lot more than a shrug. “Hey, twentysome grown men are about to play a kids game, show some respect and listen to this old song like it’s your mother’s funeral dirge.”

I have a buddy who, when he sneezed, I’d say, “God bless you” (or gesundheit or something), and he’d very ostentatiously go, “No thank you”.

I think the first few times i didn’t even give it a thought, but after like his 20th refusal over the course of 5 years, I went, “are you trying to tell me something”?

he then announces how he finds other people’s mention of “god” and stuff irritating because as an athiest he doesn’t want to play along with other people’s conventions,etc.

I then remind him – “you’re aware i’m just as athiest as you are, yes?” and he nods. “but you’re giving me shit anyway?” He shrugs. “Who are you making this point TO? yourself?”

I pointed out that the reflex to simply ‘say something’ to someone who’s sneezed is just a social convention that means nothing other than a symbolic way for people to wish you “good health”. There’s nothing spiritual or religious about it in its actual essence. whatever bullshit meaning it may have had has been replaced by mere ‘social ritual’, which are things everyone does simply to express awareness of our surroundings and peers.

The fucking anthem is the name thing. Its only superficially about nationalism or god or whatever – its just a goddamn convention which pleases most people because it gives them the opportunity to ‘do stuff together’.

you don’t like it? fine, but you’re banging your head against a wall expecting anyone to care.

I’ve said it a couple of times, but I began to lose sympathy by Friday, September 14.

The NCAA allowed individual conferences to decide whether their games would be played that weekend. Every conference but the SEC postponed their games. I wouldn’t have minded having some college football, or almost anything on to start getting back to normal. But the national/NY media had a shit-fit and bullied the SEC into postponing their games, too.

“This song also traces its roots back to England. The songwriting credit often goes to keyboard virtuoso and composer John Bull (1562?1628) who worked for King James, and penned a little ditty the English like to call “God Save the King” (or Queen, depending on who’s currently got the job). Others believe the original source was from an old Scots carol, “Remember O Thou Man.”…

“Whoever hummed it first, the tune has long served as the United Kingdom’s national anthem. And that’s not the only country that’s using it. Australia, Belize, Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Liechtenstein and Norway have all borrowed the song, but set their own lyrics to it. And that’s not all. About 140 composers in all (so far) have used it as a jumping off point (but usually as a finale) in works they put their name for the past few hundred years.”

Women who’ve been raped and are reluctant to come forward because they’re afraid of being thought of as some kind of Jackie have also been done some real harm.

Anyway, my comment wasn’t supposed to ignite a pity contest to see who’s been hurt the worst.

My point was that this lady’s good intentions have done real harm to campus rape victims everywhere. I doubt anything in recent memory has hurt the credibility of rape victims in the popular imagination more than that infamous Rolling Stone article.

And if you can think of something that actually has hurt the credibility of rape victims even more than that Rolling Stone article? that doesn’t really counter the claim that the Rolling Stone article did real damage to the perceived credibility of rape victims on college campuses everywhere.

“Hours before his death, Charles Carroll of Carrollton sat in his chair and reverently received the Eucharist from a priest for the last time.

“In ‘American Cicero,’ [Bradley] Birzer noted how the classically trained Catholic patriot had once written, “Who are deserving of immortality? They who serve God in truth, and they who have rendered great, essential and disinterested services and benefits to their country.””

In fact, these inconsistencies largely confirmed to Erdely that Jackie was telling the truth, since Erdely believed that such behavior was typical of survivors of sexual assault.

You know, that’s how they get evidence for the “recovered memory” child abuse cases – if the kid can’t remember being molested, why, that’s proof he was molested because molested kids blank out the memory! If the kid does remember being molested, that’s proof too. And if his memories of being molested include unicorns and spaceships and invisible vampires, obviously the unicorns and the spaceships and the invisible vampires were imaginary – but not the molesting, that was real.

I’ve posted about this before, but the SF Chron is engaged in a ‘project’ with other news outlets to ‘solve homelessness.’ The wrap up was a front page editorial (for which someone broke an arm patting themselves on the back; A FRONT PAGE EDITORIAL!!!) reviewing the issues, causes and proposing solutions. Not one word regarding moral agency, none about perverse incentives; the causes are external, societal. The solutions were retreads of existing programs in a new font with appeals for more money. So, here’s NPR: “San Francisco Media Outlets Unite To Help End The City’s Homelessness” […] “In just a matter of days after publishing, they are seeing the effects of their efforts. “I think we’ve already been successful . . . We’ve already made national news headlines. You see politicians dealing with the issues. … There’s legislation by some lawmakers calling on the governor to declare a state of emergency.”http://www.npr.org/2016/07/03/…..t=20160703

Yeah, I was thinking of ‘replying’ this post to straffinrun’s ‘perception of justice is justice’ above. Imagine the accomplishment of getting two CA D’s to ask for more money! I guess they can call it a day!

Didn’t SF invite those homeless to come to their fair city by offering them incentives (various forms of assistance) a decade or two back? I seem to remember them looking down their noses at everyone else and crowing about their moral superiority while dismissing out of hand any critics that said they would be overrun.

Suthenboy|7.4.16 @ 9:56PM|# “Didn’t SF invite those homeless to come to their fair city by offering them incentives (various forms of assistance) a decade or two back?”

It was never so clean-cut, but at one time, SF offered pretty hefty weekly cash payments, and since you were ‘homeless’, you had no address therefore couldn’t be qualified as an SF resident. Pretty sure it was a couple of the remaining ‘investigative’ writers (Matier and Ross) who located a gal who was a dealer in some Tahoe casino who grabbed a bus once a week, stood in line and grabbed some cash. As a result, SF got the rep, and a rep of free shit is hard to lose, especially if there are lefty-loonies running the place (which there are) who evince no intention of correcting that rep. Suffice to say, I recently met a woman who came from GA on a bus with her 6 kids; they told her in GA that SF would be happy to pay for her kids and gave her a bus ticket. Now the Chron claims only 20% are ‘out of town’ which is enough to cause real harm to any budget. But if you check, the numbers are self-reported from interviews; about as honest as the number of people who own firearms.

Somehow in my memory it was a pretty straightforward invitation, but ok. I may be remembering the debate that went on beforehand where one side was warning that the city would be swamped with homeless and the other was foo-fooing them. It seems there was a similar debate over the city offering free needles, or even drugs, to addicts.

Precisely. Homelessness is far more a product of mental illness than any social or economic conditions. Short of locking them in their new homes, you won’t keep most of them from wandering back into the streets. But it’s harder to pin schizophrenia on capitalism and the white patriarchy, so that aspect more or less gets ignored.

“…I’m reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would’ve been abolished earlier, American Indians would’ve faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government that makes policymaking easier and lessens the risk of democratic collapse.”

Vox and it’s fearless (factless?)[clueless?] leader suffer from epic cognitive dissonance. These are the raging butt monkey ass clowns who think the correct approach to reducing rape victimization is the deliberate victimization of innocent young men. With a straight face no less.

When asked, the number one reason given for people migrating out of europe to NA was “I hear they don’t have kings there.”

The revolution happened because of the kinds of people that lived in the colonies and the kinds of people that tried to rule them. It was inevitable. Trying to outlaw slavery was going to bring war because of the kinds of people who were practicing it. I am pretty sure the civil was was inevitable as well. Trying to institute a parliamentary system here, because of the kinds of people here (stubborn shitheads like the ones on this board, myself included) would probably bring war also.

The world is a much better place because of bitter clingers. Fuck you Dylan. Fuck you Vox.

I know this has been done before but it’s worth doing again because Dylan is exactly what you would portray if you parodied him in a cartoon:

Anyway. Regarding the parliament thing, I can see pluses and minuses to that BUT it completely misses the fundamentals that make the US superior regardless of the details. Starting with the Declaration of Independence and continuing with the Constitution. The ideals were not immediately realized (yes, slavery) but they still stand.

That’s kind of insipid. Honestly, I don’t think it would’ve made as much difference either way as most people imagine, but: 1) No, slavery would not be abolished sooner; most of the US was highly agrarian and dependent on plantation slavery far more than the UK or Canada; if the US were part of the British Empire when it abolished slavery, the US would have revolted then. In fact, the opposite may have happened: the British may have avoided outlawing slavery until much later to avoid passing off their golden goose in the American South.

2) Why would a British governor be any nicer to Indians than an autonomous American president?

3) The US’s system is among the most stable in the world and among the least prone to ‘Democratic collapse’ (I’m assuming by this he means whenever the majority of people disagree with him). It’s been more stable than every large country in Europe except possible Britain itself.

Deadwood is most interestingly imagined as taking place on a Rim World in the Firefly ‘Verse.

…

well i think there’s something to that in a way. Deadwood’s version of “The West” was certainly more “HBO alternate universe” than it was at attempt at Historical veracity. Unless we’re prepared to believe *that just maybe* everyone really did say “Cocksucker” 5000 times a day in the late 19th century.

But on that same point = because of that fact, its certainly way too “HBO” for Firefly, which was decidedly more NC-17/Network TV in its depiction of future-frontier living. Even the whorehouse in the Firefly episode was *cute and whimsical* in its broaching the discussion of boy-whores.

If it were Deadwood’s version, the boy-whore would be complaining loudly to the others of his infected, bloody anus.

Like pretty much all of Erdely’s big stories, this one stank from the start. A rapist is going to kneel, with his family jewels exposed, and struggle with an unwilling woman on the floor of a dark room which is covered in broken glass? Five rapists in a row? Nobody stops raping and yells “Ouch, shit!” when they encounter broken glass? Nobody turns on the lights? A woman lies on broken glass, has five different guys lie on top of her and rape her, and her wounds require no medical attention?

That’s not the worst of it. Maybe, maybe, a rapist or two risks some broken glass- it’s implausible, but…

Here’s what’s impossible- that so many pledges would participate in a gang-rape, and that they would, for sure, keep quiet about it afterward, to such a degree that it became a ritual.

Sure, young men are impressionable, and you might, and I say _might_, be able to get some pledges to go along with a rape, in the moment. I doubt it, but let’s say you could.

At least one of them would wake up the next day thinking about his sister, or his mother, and in the cold light of day would blow the whistle. I’ve had some frat-boy friends and they were decent guys, for the most part. A couple of them were really great guys, the kind of guys who would fight tooth and nail to protect someone if necessary. What I find impossible is just what RS wanted to show- that every single brother in that fraternity was willing to participate in _very_ violent rape and then keep quiet about it.

Sorry, no way. It’s not to the credit of journalists that it took broken glass and catfishing emails to call the story into question.

A friend’s son told the joke at the dinner table: Blind man walks by the fish market and says ‘Hello, ladies’. The wife (who was a naif) asked ‘what does that mean?’ Son looks at my friend who says: “You told it; you explain it.” Friend didn’t tell me how it resolved; not sure I wanted to know.

Point of order: “You guys are not playing within the spirit of the game.”

Noted, Rufus.

Here is my answer. I doubt that Ms. Erdely would find me attractive after a brief conversation wherein we honestly expressed our views on matters important to the two of us, and therefore she “would not”. For similar reasons I “would not”.

She’s almost cute in a worshiping the red god and 100 years older than she appears sort of way. On the other hand, she sees rape wherever she sees sex. There’s crazy, and then there’s that sort of crazy. Wouldn’t, as a matter of prudence.

I think it would be interesting for someone to actually do some proper journalism for once on this whole subject of “Campus Rape Culture”… instead of constantly just regurgitating/recycling the same source-stories as everyone else.

For example = it seems like there have been *distinctly fewer* articles about the imperative need to DO SOMETHING about Campus Rape Culture in 2015-2016…. compared to say, 2013-2015.

There have certainly been a few high-profile incidents (e.g. brock swimmer guy, vandy footballer, etc)…but not the steady and ubiquitous drumbeat about how this problem (despite being largely contrived) requires immediate and urgent passage of Affirmative Consent laws, and expand support centers etc. more federal money, Safe Spaces, etc. and so on.

have the media found new issues of Oppression and Marginalization to cover,… or is it just because its been an election year, and they don’t have the bandwidth anymore?

It would be interesting to do a “year by year” chart of the frequency that issues like “affirmative consent”/”campus rape culture”/ etc. appear in individual stories were written…. 20 mins on Lexis-Nexus. Maybe combine that with some of the cleary-act data reporting used to suggest “huge growth” in sexual assault in recent years.

“I think it would be interesting for someone to actually do some proper journalism for once on this whole subject of “Campus Rape Culture”… instead of constantly just regurgitating/recycling the same source-stories as everyone else.”

Ten years or so ago, I had an email exchange with a local columnist who has since become a ‘buddy’ (acquaintance?). He wrote about an activist group in Livermore (site of a nuke lab) which was ‘activating’ for compensation for spice (? – spouse plural) who had worked in the lab and died of cancer. I asked ‘were there more than expected in a given population?’. He responded with a link to CDC, un-directed, dead end, obviously passed to him by the group, and which he presumed had the evidence. I mailed back and pointed out there was no evidence; he got huffy, I did too, responding ‘evidence or STFU’. It became obvious he preferred the paycheck and the notoriety of being a ‘journalist’ more than any rep for integrity. Since we’ve met in meat space, I don’t bother beating on him; he’s not gonna get honest and lose a Chron paycheck to satisfy a skeptic. But he now rarely ‘reports’ a press release from an activist group. We had a discussion before the ‘homeless project’ and he made it clear what his editors expected; he did well in the circumstance. I’d hope, but have no idea whether my bitching had an effect.

before I saw the bank draft which had said $9426 , I didnt believe that…my… brother woz like actualy earning money part-time at there labtop. . there uncles cousin has done this 4 less than fifteen months and by now repaid the dept on there place and got a great new Mini Cooper . read the full info here …

To be absolutely clear, Jackie’s retelling of her subsequent trauma was convincing (even if the story itself was hard to believe).

Only to someone who is too gullible to do the slightest bit of fact-checking. No, that story sounded absolutely ludicrous from the outset. Only an incompetent would have taken that load of horseshit on blind faith.

And I don’t think she was that much of an incompetent. I think she figured nobody would fact-check her story and she didn’t care if Jackie lied so long as it sounded convincing enough to get people to read it, because PC demands that people who claim they were raped can never be cross-examined or doubted.

RE: UVA Lawsuit: Rolling Stone Believed Jackie Until the Bitter End, New Documents Show Jackie’s obsession with Law and Order: SVU, Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s search for missing scars, and more.

Rolling Stone is a progressive magazine that can do no wrong. One only has to look at how it has defended Dear Leader’s wise policies, show contempt for capitalism, openly advocates higher taxes and more intrusion by The State to recognize just how wonderful this publication truly is. Besides, when was any progressive magazine proven wrong?

One would hope this Activist with a Byline would never work in the media again, but since most of the media consists of social justice harridans with bylines, she probably will. And, I remind readers Jackie’s tale was not her first rodeo with false accusation.